


Sunlight

by Iverna



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Captain Swan - Freeform, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-19
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-25 01:12:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14367705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iverna/pseuds/Iverna
Summary: Some missing scenes set during the season 4 finale when deckhand Killian Jones meets the most bewitching, gorgeous woman he's ever seen.





	1. Chapter 1

The picture didn’t do her an ounce of justice.

It takes a moment for Killian’s brain to catch up with the rest of his body. His legs have carried him forward a little too far, his arms reached for her before he could stop himself, and as for his heart, it feels like it’s using itself as a battering ram on his ribcage.

Distantly, he hears the lad confirm what he already surmised: this is Henry’s mother. Emma, the mad sorceress whom the Queen locked away in this accursed tower.

She’s still holding onto him, one hand against his chest, and she’s _smiling_ at him. Her face is lit, surrounded by a cloud of tousled blond hair, and her lips part slightly as she blinks once, then again.

She looks far younger than he’d expected, far too young to be a witch, although Killian has to admit that he doesn’t have anything to base that on, seeing as how he’s never met a witch before. But whatever he vaguely expected, this is not it. He didn’t expect her to be so... bewitching. She’s beautiful, for one, but it goes beyond that. There’s something about her that he recognises, something that calls to him. He has to fight the urge to draw her closer, an instinct that feels so natural that it scares him

For her part, Emma is looking up at him with bright eyes, looking almost awestruck, like she can’t quite believe that he’s here – in a _good_ way. For a moment, she actually looks happy to see him.

Perhaps she really is mad.

He’s staring, he realises, and a gentleman would have disengaged himself long ago. Not to mention responded to the introductions being made.

“Ahh,” he manages, shakes his head a little to try and clear it, gives himself a mental slap. _Get it together, Jones._

He clears his throat, leans back a little, and tries again: “Yeah, uhm...”

That isn’t much of a response, either, but he has to glance away for a moment before he remembers actual words and their use. It’s a good thing they didn’t bring the rest of the crew with them. He can almost hear them laughing at him as it is.

He gives her a smile, almost winces when he hears the awkward little laugh that accompanies it, and holds out a hand. “Pleasure.”

And perhaps he’s the one going mad, because for a moment he thinks that he sees something like disappointment on her face when he creates the distance between them. Her smile falters as she lets go of him, and she glances down at his hand before taking it almost hesitantly.

“Yeah. Right.” She seems to have found her balance, her expression more determined than anything else now, and he thinks that maybe the smile was less to do with him and more with the fact that she’s finally free. “We need to... get going.”

She brushes past him, and he watches her go, unable to take his eyes off her. “We’ve got a wedding to stop,” she says over her shoulder as she sweeps past the lad. Killian had all but forgotten about him, but he’s still right there, and he’s _smirking_ at Killian.

Something a little contrary rises up inside him at that. The lad has already shanghaied him into this crazy adventure, crossing the Bottomless Sea and bluffing their way past a Black Knight. At the very least, he might have given Killian some warning that Emma was far more breathtaking than the picture even hinted. Granted, he’s certainly _seen_ more than his share of beautiful women, in taverns and on the captain’s arm as Blackbeard led them across the deck to his quarters. But he can’t recall ever exchanging so much as two words with one, far too awkward and hopeless to even try such a thing. It’s always clear from the looks they give him that they have no time for him, the cowardly crippled deckhand forever in the captain’s shadow, a sorry figure indeed next to Blackbeard’s swaggering charm.

So to say that he is not used to ladies running into his arms and giving him a smile that lights him up from inside like he’s seen the sun for the first time in three hundred years... even _that_ may be understating the matter.

Killian endeavours to bring this across in a gesture, because his mouth is still hanging open and words are still elusive, but Henry only smirks even more and turns around to hurry after his mother.

They clearly expect him to follow. Whatever crazy venture they’re embarking on next, they seem to count him as a sure part of it.

He doesn’t even hesitate before striding after them. He may be a coward and no good in a fight, he may have absolutely no idea what this is about, but he does know two things. He, Killian Jones, just helped rescue a lady from a dangerous tower. And she, Emma Swan, smiled at him for it.

He can’t _not_ follow her.

And he can’t quite help the grin that splits his face as he strides to catch up with her, either.

 

*  *  *

 

“At least the ship’s still here,” Emma remarks as they emerge from the tunnel to see the _Jolly Roger_ docked just outside. “I was worried Gold might’ve taken it.”

“Well, it _was_ Blackbeard’s,” Henry tells her. “Hook was a deck hand.”

“That figures.” Emma sounds annoyed, and Killian has a fleeting thought that perhaps she was hoping to be rescued by someone a little more, well, dashing. But her annoyance doesn’t seem to be directed at him. She and Henry seem to be in agreement that he’s the _Jolly Roger_ ’s rightful owner, and he’s damned if he has any idea where they might have picked up such a notion.

Madness, that’s the obvious answer. But despite her reputation and admittedly some evidence to support it, Emma Swan doesn’t strike him as mad.

“How’d you get it back?” she asks.

Henry grins. “Knocked him out.”

Emma draws back and stares at her son. “You did?”

“Yep.” Henry shrugs. “I sort of used the ship to do it. Cut a piece of the rigging and it hit him on the back of the head.”

Emma laughs, a surprised, bright sound full of delighted pride. She turns and catches Killian’s eye, although whatever she sees there has her sobering again. He isn’t sure what to make of her, the odd mixture of familiarity and distance with which she treats him. It’s almost as if her first instinct is to treat him as someone she knows and trusts, and she keeps having to check it.

She bumps Henry’s shoulder with hers as they reach the gangplank. “Pirate tactics, kid?”

The lad grins again before starting up the plank. “I figure it’s fair when you’re facing a pirate. The point is, you win.”

Something about that makes Killian’s heart flutter again, a strange feeling filling his chest – warm and oddly full. It takes him a moment to identify it as pride, a rare sensation for him.

When he sets foot on the _Jolly Roger_ ’s deck, Emma turns to him with a smile that looks almost apologetic. “Sorry, I don’t remember, what do we do first?”

“First, we need a heading,” he tells her, relieved when his voice comes out reasonably strong. This is sailing. This, he can do.

Even if his crew consists of a beautifully bewitching woman and her rather precocious son (who, Killian doesn’t fail to notice, is smirking again).

“Back the way we came,” Henry says. His expression shifts— “On second thought, maybe not _exactly_ back to where we came from. Blackbeard’s probably awake by now.”

“We’ve got to find Regina,” Emma says, and turns to Killian again. “Where’s the nearest port?”

Killian has no idea who Regina is, but he does know the lay of the land. “There aren’t any other ports nearby. If you want to return anywhere near to where you set out, lad, it’ll have to be that one.”

Henry gives his mother a worried glance, and Killian realises that for all the boy’s gung ho attitude, he isn’t all too eager to face the captain again. He can’t blame him. The rigging trick probably won’t work a second time.

“Don’t worry about Blackbeard,” he hears himself say. “If he’s regained consciousness, he’ll want his ship back, but once we’re back in port you’ll no longer have need of it, will you?”

“So we just give it up?” Henry sounds incredulous, as if that option hadn’t occurred to him.

“If need be.” Killian doesn’t much like the idea himself; it’s nice to at least fantasise about taking the ship, taking his place as her captain, going on grand adventures...

But he knows that he won’t. He can’t.

“It’s just a ship, lad,” he says. “We took it to save your mother, and we’ve accomplished that.”

Emma is looking at him strangely again, eyes bright, a secret, almost tender smile on her lips. “I guess some things never change,” she says softly. She shakes her head, and raises her voice a little, back to business. “All right, so we head back to where you two came from,” she says. “So we’ve got a heading. Now what?”

It becomes clear very quickly that like Henry, Emma has limited experience with sailing vessels; she knows how to secure a rope and hoist a sail, but she needs someone else to tell her _when_ to do it.

Before long, he’s yelling orders across the deck as they loose the mooring lines and cast off. He falls into the familiar rhythm of it, and even though giving the orders rather than scurrying to obey them should feel different and strange, he finds that it doesn’t. Even Emma’s presence doesn’t throw him off-kilter when they haul on a rope together, despite her nearness.

When Henry yells “Aye, Cap’n!” in reply to an order, he almost forgets what he’s doing because he’s smiling too much.


	2. Chapter 2

He’s allergic to rum.

It’s the pettiest thing yet about this weird alternate-reality-mess that Gold has set up, and Emma has to fight back her anger as she watches Killian fumble his way through their conversation. This isn’t just about Gold getting his happy ending. It’s about depriving everyone else of theirs, too. Down to the last detail.

Killian is flustered again, blushing a little and smiling too much, clearly desperate not to say the wrong thing but equally desperate not to lapse into total silence.

She’s desperate, too: desperate to reach for him, to embrace him, to really _talk_ to him again after all the time she spent in limbo, endlessly waiting, trying to hold onto hope even as it crumbled inside her. It’s disorienting to stand here and look at him, knowing that it’s Killian, but not really.

She has never appreciated until just now how difficult it must have been for him in New York, faced with the complete lack of recognition from her.

And _he_ hasn’t kneed her in the crotch or handcuffed her to a park bench.

In fact, his reaction to her is the one thing that doesn’t seem to have changed much, and now that they’re out of immediate danger, Emma can’t ignore it any more. She barrelled into him, a complete stranger to him, and he’d looked at her with wonder on his face and words caught in his throat. He’s still looking at her that way, like he can’t believe she’s actually here and talking to him. It’s a little bit adorable.

It’s mostly heartbreaking.

“My schedule’s pretty clear,” he tells her when she tries to postpone the question of why she trusts him—of _course_ she trusts him—and it’s so _Killian_ that she has to take a breath. Hesitant and even shy he may be, in this topsy-turvey reality, but he’s still not letting her off the (there’s nothing for it) hook.

 “Okay,” she says, more an acknowledgement of his request than an assent. The thought of sitting down with him and telling him her story is tempting; she’s missed this, their conversations, the way his eyes never leave hers. But there are more important things to do for now, and as usual, there’s not enough time.

“Let’s... first work on your fighting skills,” she says. He looks taken aback at the mere idea of it, but she knows that he has it in him, and she doesn’t want to leave him like this, a coward who thinks himself useless. She’s seen it on his face, the reluctance, the doubt, the disbelief that she’s even giving him the time of day.

And yet, when she told him to fire the cannon, he stood his ground and fired the cannon.

Killian, _her_ Killian, is still in there.

“Then,” she goes on, “we’ve gotta help Regina stop that wedding.”

“What’s the significance of this wedding, if I might ask?” Killian asks, a little hesitantly. “Whose wedding is it?”

“Robin’s,” Emma says, half her mind already thinking ahead to how they’re going to accomplish this next step.

Killian nods, and swallows hard. “I take it he’s important to you?”

“What?” She remembers too late that Killian has no idea who Robin is. To her mild surprise, she sees no jealousy on his face, only a deep sadness that he’s trying to cover up. She wants to kiss that look off his face, but that’s not really an option right now. “No, it’s not like that. He’s important to Regina. Her true love. But they can’t remember that right now.”

Killian frowns. “How could someone forget a thing like that?”

“You’d be surprised,” Emma says softly. “Look, this,” she waves a hand at the world around them, “this reality, or whatever it is... it’s all wrong. They rewrote it. That’s why you’re a deck hand, and I was locked in a tower, and Robin’s marrying someone he doesn’t love.”

“You’re telling me there’s another reality where things are different?” Killian asks.

“Yeah.” She blows out a breath. “I know it seems crazy.” She shakes her head, fighting back the rising despair. “I must sound crazy. All I can say is, I’m not.”

“Is that...” Killian clears his throat, eyes flitting away from her before latching back onto her gaze. “Is that why the lad assumed I was the captain?”

He’s always been good at that, putting the pieces together. Even though he seems almost embarrassed to say it, as if the very idea is laughable. Emma nods, her own gaze never wavering. “Yes. Captain Hook.”

She can’t seem to say that name without a fond smile, these days.

He lifts the prosthetic that gave him his name and looks at it as though for the first time. He swallows, his throat working. “It’s strange,” he says. “I’ve never thought about why... how... an accident, I think. I can’t remember.”

It’s on the tip of her tongue to tell him—Rumplestiltskin, Rumplestiltskin, it always comes back to Rumplestiltskin. He’s taken so much from them all. But right now, it hardly matters who took Killian’s hand, or his memories. Emma can’t restore either to him. All she can do is try to convince him to believe her.

She thinks back, to a fateful morning when she opened the door to a handsome man dressed in black leather. He didn’t save her with fairytales and magic. He helped her save herself.

“You can’t remember because it’s a story,” Emma says. “They can’t have filled in all the blanks. There’s bound to be things that are just... missing.”

He looks thoughtful, and he hasn’t actually dismissed anything so far, so she gives him an imploring look. “Killian, I know you. You can feel it. Something’s wrong. It doesn’t add up.”

“Today has certainly been...” He shakes his head, as if trying to clear it. “I don’t know.”

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but I need you. I need you to believe me. I need your help.”

His eyebrows rise, but his expression is steady. “Of course I’ll help you.” There’s a gap at the end of his sentence, and it takes a moment for Emma to realise what’s missing: “love”. Shy, hesitant deckhand Killian Jones probably wouldn’t dream of addressing anyone that way. She’s become so used to the easy way the endearments fall from his mouth, the absence of them is jarring.

“Whatever I can do,” he goes on. Then he ducks his head, a gesture that’s new to her and doesn’t suit him at all. “Though I’m afraid if you it’s fighting skills you need, I’m not your man. That is,” he adds hurriedly, a blush rising to his cheeks again, “I’m not likely to be much use.”

Emma can’t help it. She grins at him. “Pretty sure you are. Don’t write yourself off just yet, okay? We just slew a dragon.”

He smiles back, and just for a moment, she sees it—that daring spark in his eyes. It’s gone almost instantly, but it’s enough to lift her spirits. “Aye, that we did. And I am at your service.”

“Good,” Emma says. “Great. Okay.” She looks down at herself. “First things first, I should probably get changed. Do you have any clothes aboard that’ll fit me?”

“Uhm...” His eyebrows have shot up. “I’m not—I don’t know. Perhaps in the quarters belowdecks, but I’m not sure—”

“Right,” Emma says, heading for the ladder down to the captain’s quarters. “Let’s find out.”

To her mild surprise, and relief, they actually find a few things. Killian procures a blue-grey leather tunic from somewhere, and Emma finds some pants and a white shirt that looks like it will fit.

Killian nods, and turns towards the ladder. “I’ll leave you to—”

“Wait,” she interrupts. Her dress is beautiful, but she has no idea how to begin getting out of it. A zipper, she could manage herself, but there are no zippers in the Enchanted Forest. “Help me with the laces?”

He swallows, his mouth falling open, and casts an almost longing look towards the ladder. “I’m not sure if I can be of service there...”

Again, it might be endearing if it weren’t making her so angry. He’s not supposed to be like this. He’s supposed to swagger over, eyebrow raised, some suggestive comment on his lips. And yeah, she’d roll her eyes and fire off a snarky retort, but _fondly_. Because that’s _Killian_ , that’s who he is, and she lo—likes that about him.

This... this is just weird. And unfair. And aggravating.

“Sure you can,” she says, keeping her tone light. “Killian. Come on. You have a hook. I’m never going to wear this dress again.”

He blushes furiously as he catches her meaning. “You want me to—”

“Yes. Come on, please. Otherwise I’ll have to take a knife to it myself and that probably won’t go so well.”

He shakes his head. “There must be another way, surely.”

“I’m sure there is,” she says, annoyance giving way to frustration, and she searches out his eyes, trying to reach him. To show him that she’s here, she’s real, and she needs his help, and not just with the laces. “But like I said, I’m not from around here, and I don’t _know_.”

For a moment, he looks at her. Then he nods, lips pressed together. “All right.”

She turns away from him, holding onto her dress at the shoulders, just in case. He puts his hand on her back, gentle and hesitant, and slices through the lacing of the bodice with more care than probably any man who has ever done this.

If they make it out of here, Emma promises herself, they’re revisiting this scene. Properly. He’s made allusions to it before—he’s made allusions to everything—but there was never time, and she’s been scared and holding back, and—

The pressure around her chest and waist eases as the corset gives way. She lets out a breath. “Thank you.”

His hand lingers for just a moment before he snatches it away as though he’s caught himself. “Of course. I’ll, uh, leave you to change.”

And he does. In a hurry.

Emma strips off the now-ruined dress and slips on the borrowed clothes. The shirt is a little big, but the tunic fits just fine once she wraps a belt around her waist. Boots and some leather arm bracers complete the outfit, and she feels a little more like herself again. Her hair is a tangled mess, but she manages to wrangle it into some braids and ties it back to keep it out of her face, and grabs a sword.

Better.

When she gets back on deck, Killian is leaning against the railing, spyglass in hand. He makes a comment to Henry at the wheel, and the boy makes an adjustment. Emma has to swallow. It looks so normal, so right, and yet...

“Hey Mom,” Henry says over his shoulder. “We’re almost there!”

Killian fumbles the spyglass a bit as he looks over. Emma pretends not to notice, already spreading her arms to show off the outfit, like it’s instinct. It kind of is. Usually, every new outfit she tries on is met with a grin and a “let’s have a look, then, love”.

This Killian would never say such a thing, of course. It’s up to Emma to take the initiative. “What d’you think?”

He clears his throat. “You, uh, look beautiful.” His voice catches a little on the last word, like he’s not used to saying it.

Emma smiles to cover the ache in her chest, and nods. “Thanks. At least I can move again. Speaking of which... here.”

She holds out the sword she found, belt wrapped around the scabbard.

He shoots a nervous glance at it. “I told you, I’m not much of a swordsman.”

“And I told you that you are,” Emma says. “Take it. We’ll go over a few basics once we make port. I promise, you’ll be great.”

“You’re a great swordsman,” Henry adds, careful to keep one hand on the wheel. “The best one I know—uhm. Don’t tell Gramps I said that.”

Emma laughs. “Dangerous words, kid.”

“Whatever. Point is, Killian’s good. Really good. You just have to... try,” he adds earnestly to Killian, and Emma knows he almost said “remember”. “It’ll come to you.”

They dock under Killian’s supervision. That, at least, is something he’s settled into. His voice is hesitant at first, but within moments, he seems to forget about his doubts in the face of the task that needs to be done. He shouts orders in a clear, commanding voice, the captain’s voice, and Emma, Henry, and the ship obey. It’s the one situation where Emma doesn’t mind following his orders, where nothing about it rankles.

Right now, here, it’s a huge relief. It means he hasn’t actually changed all that much. Deep down, he’s still Killian Jones, pirate captain and master swordsman and incorrigible flirt.

And if the captain comes out when it’s time to sail the ship... maybe some sword practice and a bit of flirting will bring back the rest.

“Come on then,” Emma says, beckoning him to follow as she makes to the gangplank and winking at him. “Let’s see about that sword of yours.”


End file.
